Nature built into humans the capability to store food in the form of fat for hard times. In a society of overabundant food this facility becomes a detriment and is responsible for many of the physical ills of our nation. The problem is compounded by the security and pleasure which eating gives, starting in infancy.
Present bathroom scales are very poor as an aid to weight control. They are at best only accurate to one or two pounds. Strong psychological reinforcement is required to counteract the pleasures of eating. For example, reward in the form of positive reinforcement is enjoyed by the crash dieters. To reinforce the positive aspects of weight losing the "Weight Watchers" Organization forbids the use of scales except once a week, so that progress can certainly be noted. Lacking the rigorous discipline of such a program, after dieting for several days and seeing no progress, many people experience discouragement and quit. Thus current scales, being unable to detect and indicate limited gain or loss of weight, actually act in a negative way.
The requirements of a bathroom scale providing both the requisite accuracy and designed to give the necessary psychological reinforcement are extreme. In weighing a human, a range of one to 300 or more pounds is required. If accuracy to 0.1 pound is desired this is one part in 3,000. This refinement exceeds the prior art limitation of mechanical and spring scales for bathroom use. Laboratories circumvent this magnitude of error by weighing in very limited ranges. Even physicians' scales with their extended beams do not give accuracy of the order herein envisioned.
A review of electronic scales shows consideration of tare weight, digital display, and various electronic measuring devices such as pressure transducers, wheatstone bridges, etc. However, none of these are applied to scales suitable for home use in a personal dieting program and designed for the purpose herein outlined, to provide both the required accuracy and readout format to attain the psychological reinforcement which is the aim of this unique design.
Several patents, such as Benedict U.S. Pat. No. 2,108,575, Provi et al U.S. Pat. No. 3,469,645, Hoffman U.S. Pat. No. 3,550,705 and Hutchinson et al U.S. Pat. No. 3,667,561 disclose scales suitable for home use and having electrically operated readouts. However, none has provided the capability or even recognized desirability of reading in ounces or small fractions of pounds and displaying either absolute weight relative difference between the current weight applied and a previous reference weight, as does the device described herein. Similarly, several published patents such as Rock U.S. Pat. No. 3,812,923, Smith et al U.S. Pat. No. 3,684,875 and Henderson et al U.S. Pat. No. 3,665,169 disclose apparatus in which tare weight or some other previous weight is deducted from a subsequent weight. However, none of these structures would be suitable for incorporation into any scale similar to those referenced above or that in the following disclosure. More particularly, the differential in weight discussed herein should not be confused with tare weight, since tare weight relates to containers and added or subtracted objects. Here we are dealing with weighing the same object and showing deviations with regard to time. No dialing, switching or other input is required, as would be the case with tare computations, since we are relating only to a fixed set of feedback data predetermined by formulate unique to this appliance and always relating to the same individual or small group of individuals.
The existing art demonstrates that digital readouts have been suggested for scales and that the concept of a scale suitable for home use having an electrical readout is also old. However, none of the home use scales known have sufficient accuracy to provide very accurate digital readouts to ounces or fractions of a pound over the required range, nor do they include means to indicate the relative (rather than absolute) differential between a person's previous weight and his current weight.